OPEN SCIENCE
Research Quality of Registered Reports Compared to the Traditional Publishing Model. This preprint explores the question whether the Registered Reports (RR) format improves the robustness of research. Although RR have been increasingly popular, good data is hard to come by. The delay between the journal assessment of the study protocol and the final report means that numbers of completed RR remain low. This study looks at 29 published RR and 57 non-RR comparisons. It finds that RR outperformed the non-RR group. This is very promising, of course. There are still uncertainties in the data. For example, early uptakers may have a better quality level than the average body of comparable literature. We will have to wait and see how this plays out. This though looks good.
Giving back: Announcing the JROST Rapid Response Fund. The Invest in Open Infrastructure is awarding grants to “practitioners and organizations that develop and operate open technologies and services to further research and scholarship.” Thank you!
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has announced the award of 17 new grants for Open Source Software and Organizations Advancing Open Science. In total, CZI has committed $11.8M to all present and past activities under that program.
Promoting scientific integrity through open science in health psychology: results of the Synergy Expert Meeting of the European health psychology society. The recommendations put forward in this paper look strong and hopefully will see broad adoption.
PUBLISHING
Research Consulting have released data on the gold and diamond open access journals landscape. The interactive dashboard embedded in the blog post is worth looking at (with a reasonably powered computer).
China’s New STM Policies: By the Numbers. DeltaThink’s analysis of STM publishing in China. A conclusion is that over 80% of Chinese universities do not have access to paywalled content. Yet, subscription publishing remains popular in China. Only about 20% of the country’s scholarly output is published gold or hybrid open access. Still some way to go here.
cOAlition S has also released a journal checker tool that helps researchers navigate questions around journal compliance with Plan S.
RESEARCH
Sadly, the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is damaged beyond repair and will be decommissioned. In recent weeks two support cables failed, damaging the 305 m radio dish. Other cables may fail, too, and repair is not safe to perform. The above news from the National Science Foundation has been covered widely in the press, for example in the New York Times.
OTHER
Automated image recognition: How using ‘free’ photos on the internet can lead to lawsuits and fines. A photographer is allegedly utilizing the older CC-BY 2.0 license conditions under which his photos are released to seek fines for attribution violations or other shortcomings. As reported in this article, it appears he does that without providing those impacted with an opportunity to fix their errors, which is within his legal rights.
This post was corrected on 11/23 to clarify that 80% of Chinese researchers do not have access to the subscription literature.